- If the gang repented and turned to the brethren, then this is still tolerable. But if they remained "brothers", then this is outrageous.

And I will say again: if a person sacrifices, then he himself changes. On the contrary, if you refuse to sacrifice it, then the opposite reaction may occur – it will finally ossify. Sometimes harshness, punishment breaks a person, and sometimes it corrects him. This applies, for example, to the funeral service for suicides. I know of a case when a priest refused to perform a funeral service for an officer who had shot himself. His friends-officers yelled at him, made a scandal. But six months later, one of these friends came and said: "Father, thank you, you saved my life yesterday." The priest was surprised: "How could I save my life yesterday if I haven't seen you for six months?" "Father, yesterday I had such a gloom in my soul – I wanted to put a bullet in my forehead, but I remembered that you did not bury our comrade for this and stopped."

But a similar refusal to pray for a suicide can generally alienate relatives of little faith from any prayer and from Christianity in general... This means that it is a matter of conscience, sensitivity and experience of the priest. The Church gives him canons and at the same time gives him a greater degree of freedom from them, or rather, the freedom to apply them in real life. In the language of theology, this is called "oikonomia" ("house-building").

"Can a priest interpret the Ten Commandments as he wishes?"

- I am talking about the canons, not the commandments. Canons are internal norms of church discipline. For example, this is the question of whether it is possible to bury suicides.

? By the way, about suicides. Many people treat euthanasia as an act of mercy and love for one's neighbor. However, the Church opposes this act.

? Here I think our position will be somewhat consonant with the position of Mahatma Gandhi. At one time, he opposed the construction of hospitals in India, he believed that it was impossible to help the sick, especially lepers. He had a religious-philosophical argument: one should not interfere with karma. If a person does not get rid of his bad karma in this life, then he will be reincarnated and suffer even more. Within the framework of karmic ideology, this is logical.

Our position in relation to the disease is not quite the same. We believe that a person should be helped. The Lord gave medicines, doctors, etc., but together with Gandhi, we believe that there is a depth of life that is not diagnosed by doctors. A person is a "thing in itself", and not everything that happens inside him is recorded with the help of encephalograms. There is a depth where his physical pain today changes something in him on a non-physical level. If the Lord does not remove the patient, does not erase him from life, it means that there is some kind of inner creativity going on there. Within the framework of this world, we may not notice this. But the dying person just leaves our world, rebuilds himself for another life. There is no need to accelerate his childbirth, there is no need to push him out.

- Even in the XV ? In the XVI centuries, in poor Russia, anyone was not allowed to paint churches. Theophanes the Greek, monk Andrei Rublev... It was a true feat in the name of faith. They fasted before starting work. Now contracts for the construction of Russian churches are received by visiting guest workers. It's good if not the Turks. Why?

- I know churches in Siberia that were built by Turkish workers. I don't see anything wrong with this. I believe that those Muslims who helped in the construction of our churches will not, like the Albanians in Kosovo, blow up Orthodox churches. I think that this is a good cure for extremism. But they kneaded concrete, and did not paint churches. I assure you, our artists are only Orthodox.